Name: Corn Vinegar
Ingredients: 1 pint corn (cut off the cob); 1 pint brown sugar or molasses; 1 gallon rainwater

Why it works: Corn and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,168 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn Vinegar

Ingredients

1 pint corn (cut off the cob)
1 pint brown sugar or molasses
1 gallon rainwater

Directions

Combine the corn, brown sugar or molasses, and rainwater in a jar. Cover the jar with a cloth.
Place the jar in the sun.
After 3 weeks, the mixture will turn into vinegar.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,168 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn: Provides starches and sugars that yeast and bacteria ferment into acetic acid.
Brown sugar or molasses: Supplies sugars that feed the fermentation, adding sweetness and flavor to the finished vinegar.
Rainwater: Serves as the liquid medium in which fermentation takes place.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.